Sleeves of thermal-protection garments such as coats or jackets generally end at the wrist, leaving the hands and fingers unprotected from cold, requiring gloves or mittens.
Gloves have the disadvantages of needing to be carried separately from the coat and so frequently being lost; this can be a serious problem for wilderness or outdoor users and a great nuisance for the parents of small children. Numerous systems for preventing glove loss have been developed, such as a string attached to either glove and looped around the neck, clips or buttons removably attaching the gloves to the sleeves, and so on. All these have their drawbacks.
Another disadvantage of mittens and gloves is loss of dexterity, requiring repeated cycles of removal for work and replacement to keep the hands warm. Fingerless gloves address this problem by keeping the hand proper covered while leaving the fingers, or some portion of the fingers, uncovered for work.
People without gloves often pull their coat sleeve ends down over their hands or curl their fingers up into the sleeve, but this prevents all use of the hands and requires constant gripping of the sleeve ends, which normally reach to the wrist. If the sleeves are extra long, they can be folded back or unfolded and extended to cover the hands; however, prior-art sleeves have not been designed for this use and so they have no means for securing the sleeve into the folded-back position or for securing the extended sleeve onto the hand.
Several garments known in the prior art show sleeves of adjustable length.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,112,495 to Armigene Johnson shows a sleeve with buttons and buttonholes that hold it in two positions, extended and folded back. The entire cuff folds as one unit about a single fold onto the outside of the sleeve. It is intended for a fashion garment and does not cover the hand when extended.
Adjustable-length sleeve hems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,643,159 to Samuel Greenberg. U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,920 to Schaefer et al. is similar.
Several patents disclose mittens or gloves which are attached to a sleeve and which can be folded or otherwise attached out of the way.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,183,792 to Abraham Aron discloses a convertible mitten, a single side of which is attached to the "outer breadth" of a sleeve (page 1, lines 45-49), that is, on one side only; the inner portion 15 is unattached, as seen in FIG. 5 and described at page 1, line 68. The mitten and sleeve are separate pieces, attached at one point. The mitten folds over the outside of the sleeve and is held there by snaps and studs (eg., 24, 25). The thumb is held separately. Like the Wright mitten, the Aron mitten has no means for securing the mitten to the hand. The Aron mitten is a doubly-folded and externally-stored device, making it both bulky and unsightly.
George Wright, in U.S. Pat. No. 361,250, shows a combined mitten and sleeve generally resembling the Aron device except that the mitten folds inside the sleeve instead of over the outside. The sleeve-glove attachment is again on one side only. The Wright device includes a flap d that is loosened and re-fastened when converting from sleeve to mitten configurations (page 1, lines 70-84). The Wright mitten has no means for securing the mitten to the hand, so that the hand will pull out when the wearer shrugs; this makes it impractical for all but the most clumsy work. The Wright mitten is a single-folded, internally-stored device.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,092,047 to Herman Hertz shows a mitten folding over the outside of a sleeve end. It is much like the Wright and Aron devices. It is a triple-fold device (see FIG. 2).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,027, issued to Buenos et al., shows a sleeve that folds over to convert to a glove or mitten, covering the fingers. As seen in FIGS. 2 and 3, the cuff includes a conventional hollow thumb piece 21, and the cuff is attached only around half the sleeve. FIGS. 2 and 5 show the same embodiment; as seen in these figures, the lower side of the sleeve (ending at 17) does not fold between the glove and non-glove positions and only the upper side is moved in converting.
Some patents disclose convertible cuffs.
Marla Long, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,117,507, discloses animal puppet sleeves. Long's FIG. 11 shows a retractable (zero-fold) cuff combined with non-folding extensions forming a puppet structure. Long discloses a knitted cuff of the usual type which is folded inwardly when the puppet sleeve parts are used. This cuff does not cover the hand, only the wrist, as shown in FIGS. 10, 12, and 14.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,609,286 to Louis Bernstein describes a cup-like sleeve end covering that is attached to the sleeve; in the uncovered position is surrounds the coat sleeve and in the covered position it closes the end of the sleeve so that the fingers or thumb are trapped within.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,631,753 and 4,543,670 to Carolyn Ehring show sleeve attachments for multilayer protective (fire fighters') coats.
Some patents show arm coverings that cover a portion of the hand.
Bessie Samuels and Edith Long, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,416,518, disclose (FIG. 1) a cast cover of elastic stretch fabric having a thumb hole 16. The thumb hole is surrounded by an elastic edge 17.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,904,792 to Robert Elliot shows a protective arm covering for working on engines. It is much like the Samuels et al. cast cover, having a thumb hole 8. The Elliot protective device is not elastic. It has a variable diameter and longitudinal lacing.
FUTURO brochure shows a wrist brace attached by VELCRO proximal the thumb over the wrist and also distal the thumb over the palm.
Other U.S. Pat. Nos. are 7,759; 5,033,127; 2,791,777; 5,308,275; and 4,297,746.
The problem of covering the hand when a user has a jacket, but does not have gloves or mittens, has not been satisfactorily solved by prior art coat sleeves. Prior-art coat sleeve hand-covering extensions have been awkward, bulky when folded, complex in construction and use, and hindering of finger movement. The worst failing of the prior-art attempts to solve this problem is that these known sleeves extensions or sleeve-attached gloves cannot be held in a fixed position on the hand, because they lack any means for holding the sleeve in position; the sleeve can move up and down the arm, making the prior art coats practically useless if the hands need to be used for any but the roughest work.
The prior art does not disclose any coat sleeve extension which is held in position on the hand by any means whatever; in particular, it does not disclose any sleeve portion held in position on the hand by a constrictions around the wrist or about the knuckles.
The prior art does not disclose any coat sleeve that selectively covers and uncovers the palm region of the hand but does not selectively cover and uncover the thumb or the fingers.
The prior art does not disclose any coat sleeve extension which helps to keep gloves on hands while allowing the full dexterity possible with the gloves.